My name is Luigi and I have just started learning Japanese. I'm using the Human Japanese app (for iPad) and Anki. Now I am going to use this fantastic website as well.

I'm 38 years old and I have always loved Japanese culture -- one of my fondest memories of childhood is watching the Ultra series on TV. Anyway, this is going to be a real challenge, especially with two young daughters around.

My mother tongue is Portuguese, but I also speak fluent English and basic Swedish (I am living in Sweden now). It's really cool to be here.

1) It depends on what level you want to be reading at. Basic level? Easily if you work at it. (or even intermediate etc depending on how fast you learn, how well you retain, etc)2) Pen or pencil shouldn't really matter. In fact many people learning Japanese don't actually write Japanese. It's mostly about reading, typing, and speaking and listening comprehension etc. Even many Japanese can read far more kanji than they can write for instance.

Brush work for calligraphy when writing Japanese serves about as much purpose as learning and using calligraphy here in the US (or pretty much anywhere else I suppose).

I've probably written less than 100 characters in Japanese in the past 5 years. (It obviously doesn't hurt to learn to write, and I'd actually suggest you do... I'm a poor example of what a learner should be doing. hahaha... but it isn't really vital for being able to understand and speak Japanese, or even to communicate for the most part given the use of computers, keitai, etc.)

(And by the way.... 37 years old here. Never too old to learn! がんばってね！ )

I'm writing down all new characters as I learn them (and I'm in the very beginning), but I'm not trying too hard. There are many other aspects that are more important now I guess. Memorizing the hiragana syllabary and all respective sounds for example. A bit further down the road I will need to memorize meanings, not only sounds... Plus a few thousand kanji in the end! It's quite a challenge indeed -- and I'm up for it!

Fountain pens or Zebra grips. Great idea. I have one fountain pen actually, just need to remember where I put it.